


Afterwards - Episode 8 - The Room

by Windjammers



Series: Afterwards [8]
Category: Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-31 07:54:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18586996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Windjammers/pseuds/Windjammers
Summary: The Power Team finds flyers promising relocation to areas with food and shelter that are far away from Dread and his empire. In order to find out what Dread's latest scheme is, Power disguises himself as a peddler and joins a group of villagers who decide to take up the offer. During the trip, Power is recognized and captured. It's a race against time as Jennifer risks everything to rescue him. But what happened afterwards?





	Afterwards - Episode 8 - The Room

_Disclaimer: The following is a work of fan fiction based on the television series,Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. It is not intended to infringe on the copyrights of Landmark Entertainment Corporation or anyone else who may have legal rights to the characters and settings. I don't own the characters. However, I am putting them into an adventure since the show was cancelled and the writers/producers/directors/actors can’t put them into any new adventures._

~*~*~*~*~

Jon _hurt_.

Muscles he didn't even know existed felt like they were pulled past the breaking point. He wondered if he would be in as much pain if Tank had used him for a sparring partner.

Pain was a customary and established danger for the type of soldier he was and the line of work he was in. In fact, being tortured by unfeeling, unthinking, pre-programmed biomechs was a hazard of the job. He knew it. He accepted it. It could happen to any one of them if they were captured during a mission. It had happened before, it would probably happen again.

But he _hurt_ , and not just physically.

Lying in his bunk, he tried to find a more comfortable position. Every angle seemed slightly worse than the one before. Enough was enough. If lying down wasn't helping, then maybe walking around might. Slowly, he stood, grabbing onto anything sturdy to keep from falling over. Step by step, he walked toward the door and out into the hall. The med bay wasn't far. He could walk that short of a distance, right?

He could feel the pull of every muscle and the spasms that coursed through them as they protested every movement he made. Luckily, he didn't have any broken bones, but it hadn't felt that way earlier. At least the physical pain wasn't as bad as it was when he was in that room.

_That room..._

He tried to get his mind off what happened, how close it had been...how final it could have been -- and not just for him.

He could still see what transpired, feel her fall against him, smell the weapons' fire, hear her pained voice --- it hurt. He was the captain. It was his job to protect his team. What happened in that room would never have happened if he had been more vigilant and followed procedure. It was his fault.

_Right, Jon. You know she did exactly what she had to do because you were caught. She's done it before, she'll do it again. You're alive because of what she did, and you know she's the only one who could have done it._

He should have kept the team together, not split them up.

It was supposed to have been a scouting mission, that's all.

Once they found the flyers promising food and homes in a 'safe' area far from the biomechs and Dread, they knew that another trap was in operation. Town after town was found deserted by the Resistance, thousands of people missing, and the question was why. Digitization was the obvious answer, but how was Dread doing it? What was the reason? Last time, he'd used a double to impersonate Jon and lure unsuspecting people to Soaron. This time, how was he accomplishing the task? What did Dread have in mind and why was he making such a determined effort to digitize people? It had to be more than his desire to rid the world of humans and only have a mechanized civilization.

The plan had been simple enough. Jon would go in undercover as a peddler trading circuits for anything he could; he'd take a look around and try to find out how the trap worked. Jennifer would be nearby as backup; Hawk, Tank and Scout would be in the jumpship to monitor movement and frequencies.

Simple, right?

Then he was recognized, captured and taken to _the room._

He'd heard about rooms like that. Jennifer had told him something about them -- that was a story she had trouble telling in detail. There were rumors, some Jon hadn't been sure were true even though he believed Dread was capable of pure evil. Now, he knew the rumors to be fact. Those rooms existed. Their fabled function of being used exclusively to 'extract' information from difficult prisoners had been proven to Jon's satisfaction.

Every muscle he had hurt, but it wasn't his aching muscles that hurt him the most.

It was what happened... what could have happened...

 

~*~*~*~*~

 

**Hours earlier:**

_He is not going to get any information from me_ , Jon said to himself repeatedly.

"I will only ask one more time, Captain Power. Tell me where your base is," the youth leader demanded.

Only one more time? How many times had he already asked that question? Jon had lost count.

Jon pulled against his restraints. Whatever he'd been drugged with was compelling him to answer, but he had to fight it. How could he buy time? Jennifer had been safely away from the group, monitoring their path. She wouldn't have seen him get captured or know he hadn't made it to the final destination yet. The rest of the team didn't know he was in trouble. None of them knew where he was. He had to stall; he had to give his team time to realize that the mission had failed. Anything... anything... He remembered a book of poems he found in a burned out settlement years earlier. He had put it in the base library to add to their very meager collection. Edgar Allen Poe was one of the listed poets. One of the poems came to mind.

"Where is your base, Captain?"

"Base?" he asked, his voice slurring slightly.

"Yes, Captain. Your base. What is its location?" the youth leader impatiently asked again.

He felt compelled to answer, but he still had enough control over his faculties to not tell the truth. "Over... the mountains of... the moon," Jon said, his words rasping with pain. "Down the valley of the shadow." Oh, his ribs hurt. He was beginning to think the clickers had broken a few.

"Where is this valley?" the youth leader demanded. "Which mountain range?"

Jon almost laughed, but his head hurt too much to allow himself such a liberty. As much as he hated the fact that so much was withheld from the Dread Youth, it was so easy to mislead them by using the exact things that Dread kept from them. Poetic locations were definitely a good way to make them not find the base and buy time.

Again, he felt like he was being forced to answer. "You have to ride... a long way..." Jon finally answered. "It's far from here." That was the truth. The base was several hours away by jumpship.

The youth leader grabbed Jon's hair and yanked his head back. "How far?"

Jon smiled, sort of. He remembered another favorite poem. "It's far, far away and way, way afar, it's over the moon and the sea." Jon was curious what the youth leader would make of that statement.

"Your base is outside of this continent? What are the map coordinates?"

Outside the continent? Misleading this youth leader was almost too easy, but Jon was losing his tenuous hold on consciousness. He might not be able to hold his tongue if he began to pass out. He had to concentrate. He had to focus... the darkness was beginning to beckon... he took a deep breath, hoping that it would revive him a little.

"Youth Leader!" a familiar voice cut through the haze and woke him up. He looked toward the door, and there was Jennifer -- dressed in an overunit uniform? How? He almost didn't recognize her with her hair pulled back in the severe style the female soldiers wore, and the look in her eyes -- he'd never seen Jennifer have that look before. It was the soulless look of a Dread soldier, devoid of emotion and completely devoted to their mechanized duty. She even carried an overunit's pack. The disguise was perfect save one thing -- she wasn't wearing a gun, not even her own. It would have given her away immediately since it wasn't a regulation Dread Youth issued weapon. "Report."

The youth leader released Jon and immediately stood at attention. "Overunit, I was interrogating the prisoner --"

"Without success," she said as she marched toward them. "Your name."

"Youth Leader Benjamin Royer, Overunit."

"What method of information extraction are you using?"

The youth leader never flinched. "As ordered, I injected the prisoner with a truth compulsion drug. It has not taken full effect yet, Overunit. He has not given any direct answers. I cannot inject another dose yet without doing severe damage, and I have orders to keep him alive."

Jennifer walked in front of Jon, looked him in the eyes. Jon could detect no hint of recognition in them. "Your resources here are limited, Youth Leader Royer. You will not be able to retrieve information from him in this location. This prisoner is to be transferred to Volcania. I am to take custody and transport him."

"With respect, Overunit, Lord Dread himself ordered me to find out where their base is located before he arrives with more troops. He said nothing about transporting the prisoner."

"And do you share Lord Dread's confidences?" Jennifer asked condescendingly. She had the act down, that much was certain. Jon noted the arrogant stare in her eye when she looked back at the youth leader. She would have been a formidable overunit if she had stayed with the Dread Youth. Once again, he was glad she was on their side.

"I would never claim such liberties," Royer protested. "I am merely stating that Lord Dread will be here very soon and that I have not been made aware of the change in orders."

"You have been made aware of them now. I have been ordered to take the prisoner to the fortress. Release him."

The biomechs moved to follow the overunit's orders as another Dread trooper entered the room. Jon saw him draw his weapon from its holster.

"Jennifer Chase," the newly arrived overunit stood in the center of the room with his weapon trained directly on Jennifer's back. "I'm certain Lord Dread will wish to speak with you as well."

Jennifer turned, looked directly at the newcomer and said without hesitation. "Zachary Williams," Jennifer nodded in greeting. "I believe the last time we met was when I earned my Youth Leader ranking and you didn't. You were found to have low performance ratings, I believe, and a complete failure to apply basic knowledge to standardized testing."

Williams almost smiled. An overunit? Smiling? There was something very wrong going on in the room. Jon noticed that Royer and the biomechs hadn't moved. Royer was staring at the two 'overunits,' a look of surprise on his face. Had he never seen two overunits disagree on anything? The biomechs seemed just as confused as Royer.

Williams took a step closer. "Yet I have proven my loyalty to the Dread Empire. You --"

"Left," Jennifer said with, no fear in her voice although she was unarmed and looking directly down the barrel of a gun. "When I found out that Dread had lied to us about everything, I refused to be a traitor to the human race any longer."

"Those words are treason."

Jon saw Jennifer square her shoulders and stand straighter. This was righteous indignation wielded at its most truthful. "Why? Because Dread said so?"

Jon recognized this tactic. He'd heard Jennifer use it before with other soldiers that had recognized her. All she had to do was plant one small kernel of doubt, some small chink in that impenetrable belief system that was believed to be unbreakable...

Williams wasn't one to allow chinks to form or kernels to collect. "We owe our loyalty to Dread," Williams told her emphatically. "He would not betray us.

Jennifer just nodded her head. Jon knew that look on her face. That was the pure stubborn streak that was so much a part of her character. "Right. He wouldn't betray us. After all, the world is imperfect. We will make it perfect. Dread is our eyes. We are his fists. With our blood and our trust, he shall mold a new tomorrow. I know the litanies as well as you do, Zack. I can quote them backwards if I need to. Open your eyes. Look at his new tomorrow. It's utter destruction. He's destroyed people's lives. He demolished entire cities. He has taken everything that was good in this world and leveled it. He ripped us from our homes and families, took away our childhoods. He turned us into unemotional, brainwashed shells willing to die for this mechanical vision of his. He sacrificed the entire world for his own madness."

Jon watched as Williams blatantly ignore what Jennifer was saying. He recognized the signs coming from Jennifer that she knew she might as well be talking to a wall and that nothing she said would make any difference. That wouldn't stop her. Maybe she was trying to buy time as well.

No, she wasn't, Jon realized. She was trying to get Williams angry. She was baiting him.

"The world is merely in a state of transition," Williams argued. "The machine world will rise from the ashes of the old; we will be immortal minds in perfect metalloid bodies --"

"How long is it going to take before you realize Dread is lying?" she challenged him. "How long until your own intelligence overcomes the propaganda? That no one's mind gets transferred into _perfect_ metalloid bodies? Dread wants power and control, and he uses the soldiers and the clickers to get it. It's nothing but a pack of lies."

Without warning, he pulled his gun hand back and slammed it down toward Jennifer who blocked the blow cleanly with an upraised arm. She grabbed his wrist and twisted, yanking the weapon from him and flipping him onto his back on the floor. Looking at it through a blurring vision, Jon was impressed. He knew she could fight, he'd seen how well she could fight, but that was a very unexpected move. Where had she learned it?

"You never could best me hand-to-hand," she muttered. "I was top of the class, remember?"

Williams brought his foot up, kicking Jennifer in the side, forcing her to lose her grip on his wrist. She regrouped, grabbing his ankle and twisting it.

"Royer!" the overunit called for help.

The youth leader shook off his surprise at the behavior of his 'superiors' and rushed the combatants. Jennifer cleanly kicked him, doubling him over. He fell and didn't move. "You wait your turn. I'm dealing with him right now."

But the momentary diversion was all Williams needed. He used his other foot to kick Jennifer back, slamming her into Jon. He jumped up, turned and slammed his fist into the side of her jaw, knocking her into the wall and causing her to drop the weapon.

Jon tried to get his hands loose, but the chains held tight. There was no escaping. "Pilot!" he called.

But it was what happened next that surprised Jon.

_Jennifer stood up._

She was standing after being slammed into a brick wall. How could she do that after that kind of punishment?

"Is that the best you can do?" she taunted Williams. Jon saw her flex her fingers, curling them into fists. Bridled, controlled anger -- Williams had no idea what he was up against. Even Jon wasn't certain what the overunit was up against, but this was a side of Jennifer Chase he'd never seen in action before. "Second year cadets can hit harder than that," she said.

Williams rushed her -- Jennifer grabbed his arm and shoved him head first into the wall. He made a rather satisfying _thunk_ sound when he hit the ground, unconscious. Immediately, she picked up his weapon again and fired at the biomechs, hitting their sensors and knocking them to the ground. Then she grabbed the keys to the chains and almost limped over to Jon. He could tell she was hurting.

"You've got to get out of here," Jon whispered. "More are coming."

"I know. We've got a plan," she whispered back, the gleam in her eye showing him that there was mischief afoot. The gleam was being slowly hidden by the gradual swelling from Williams' pummeling.

"Do you ever obey orders?" he asked, exasperated at his slurring voice.

"Sure, I do," she said as she unlocked the chains on his wrists, "when they make sense." She smiled at him, that mischievous smile that meant he wasn't going to win this round of the argument. She had the upper hand, and she knew it. "Right now, Hawk's in charge since you're slightly incapacitated."

"I could argue that," he answered as the chains fell away and he fell to the floor.

Jennifer reached into the pack and brought out a small pouch. She opened it and picked out a syringe. She quickly injected the clear liquid into his arm. "This will help get you on your feet and clear the drug out of your system a little, but it has to wear off on its own. That's going to take a while." She pulled one of his arms over her shoulders and helped him to stand. Jon wondered where such strength came from especially when he knew she was in pain. Once again, he realized that not only were appearances deceiving when it came to her, there was a lot more to Jennifer Chase than he knew. "And you can argue the point later. The others are putting the digitizer out of commission."

Digitizer? "It's not Soaron?" he asked as they began to walk to the door.

"No. It's a mobile device about twice the size of a skybike that can digitize everyone in an entire room. Scout wants to see how big a bang he can make with it."

That meant explosives -- that meant they all had to get out of there -- that meant Jennifer was on a schedule. No wonder she wouldn't leave when he ordered her to.

"What about the other townspeople?"

"They're safe," she told him. "We cleared them out before the others started setting the explosives."

They moved out the door into the hallway when Hawk, Tank and Scout charged around the corner.

"Mind if we join the party?" Scout asked. He glanced at Jennifer. "What happened to you?"

"Ran into an old acquaintance," she told them.

One explosion rocked the corridor, knocking them to the floor.

"That wasn't mine," Scout said as he got back on his feet. "Must be clickers."

"They're here sooner than we thought," Hawk grumbled as he hauled Jon off Jennifer and started moving down the corridor. "Our charges will go off any second. Let's get out of here!"

All five ran: Hawk and Jon in the rear, Tank taking point, Scout running beside Jennifer, giving her some cover since her suit was deactivated.

"Halt!" Royer's voice called out from behind them.

In a still somewhat drug induced haze, Jon heard the shot before seeing the flash, heard Jennifer's surprised yell of pain when the blast hit her leg. He looked back and saw Jennifer fall as Royer took aim again. Tank whirled and fired at the ceiling above the soldier and collapsed it on top of him. Scout grabbed Jennifer, hoisted her up and they all ran. They couldn't stop, couldn't take care of the wounded. They had to escape. The timers were counting down...

3...

2...

1...

 

~*~*~*~*~

 

Hawk walked out of the med bay and right into Jon.

"What are you doing out of your bunk?" Hawk demanded to know. "You can barely stand."

"I can stand well enough. How's Jennifer doing?"

Hawk grabbed Jon's arm and helped him remain upright. "She's doing better than you. The wound wasn't too deep, but it was painful and she lost a lot of blood. She's a little weak but sleeping which is what you should be doing."

"She's going to be all right?"

"Sore shoulder, hurt leg, swollen eye, aching jaw, bruised ribs, slight concussion, bit of a limp, and there's no way she'll be able to pilot the jumpship for a few weeks --"

"She won't like that," Jon told him.

"She didn't like it when I told her. You know how she is when she's on downtime. She'll probably be up and moving before she should. She can't stand it when she's not allowed to do anything."

Jon leaned against the wall, trying to catch his breath. When did it become so difficult to walk from his quarters to the med bay? "What about her power suit?"

"The blast shot out an activator, but it's repairable. You, however, are not lifting a finger to fix her suit until you're better. The only reason you're not sacked out in the med bay beside her is because you're a worse patient than she is, and I don't want to have to deal with the two of you at the same time," Hawk teased.

Jon took a deep breath and tried to get the pain under control. "She pretended to be an overunit," Jon murmured. "She even had a uniform."

"It was a good idea. When she radioed us and told us you'd been captured and she was going after you, I tried to get her to wait, but you know her. She knew we didn't have the time, and she was right. More troopers were moving into the area and Dread was coming, too. She came up with a workable plan faster than I could."

Jon thought for a moment. It wasn't easy when his head felt like someone was drumming on his skull. Wait... what had Hawk said? "It wasn't your idea?"

"Mine?" Hawk seemed confused. "I would never think of asking her to put on one of those uniforms. After all she's done to get away from the Dread Youth, I can't imagine what she saw down there to convince herself that masquerading as one was a good idea."

What would have prompted Jennifer to risk her life by pretending to be an overunit?

_The room..._

She knew about _the room_. She knew what was happening and what was going to happen to him. She had put on that uniform to save him.

_Him_. Jon didn't let the thought go any further. He couldn't. He wouldn't.

"She said that you were the one in charge since I was incapacitated," Jon told him.

Hawk shook his head. "Technically, she would be right, but it was all her idea, and it worked. She created the distraction that got us inside to help free the rest of the villagers and then went to get you. She told me that she'd have to deal with the youth leader that led the group away. I don't think she was counting on that overunit, let alone one that knew her. All we had to do was plant the charges and then come join the two of you. Simple but effective."

Effective? Very. Simple? Nothing was simple when it came to Jennifer Chase. Jon was learning that fact more and more each day. In some ways, she was still a bit of a mystery, one that he wanted to learn more about.

"She had the act down perfect," he told Hawk. "We've all seen her stand in the way of Dread's soldiers to protect us, but I've never seen her behave like one of them before. Down there, she scared Royer and stood toe-to-toe with Williams without any hesitation. And you know how she told us once that she was top of her class in hand-to-hand combat? I got to see her fight firsthand. From what I saw, she tried not to seriously hurt Williams even though she took hits that would have put you and me on the ground. I think she let him hit her to set him up for that final blow," he told Hawk. "She got him so angry with her, he made mistakes."

"I know. We've all wondered how she does that ourselves," Hawk agreed. "There have been several times she's come away from a fight with only a few bruises instead of broken bones. She's one tough fighter."

Jon looked into the med bay and saw Jennifer sleeping in one of the beds. "You're sure she's all right?"

Hawk gave Jon a gentle shove into the room. "Go see for yourself. You've got five minutes, and then you go back to your room and get some rest or sack out in one of the other beds here. I don't like us being two soldiers down, not with Dread pulling some of his stunts."

 

~*~*~*~*~

 

Hawk watched as Jon limped slowly into the med bay. He was surprised it had taken Jon that long to come check on Jennifer. Before, he would have understood the need to maintain a professional distance since Jon was the leader of the team, but knowing what he knew now, what Vi had opened his eyes to, Jon was several hours behind schedule.

Slowly, Hawk walked back into the control room to find two more worried teammates waiting for him.

"Well?" Tank asked.

"Well, Jon's moving around. I met him just as I was leaving the med bay. Jennifer's still out of it. That girl took a beating and was still arguing with me about giving her something for the pain."

Scout leaned against the computer console, obvious relief showing on his face. "That's nothing new. She still has trouble admitting when she's hurting, just not as much she used to. Is she going to be all right?"

"Yeah, she'll be fine, but it'll take a couple of weeks. Serious bruising, that shot in the leg -- it all adds up to mean she'll have us doing maintenance on her ship while she supervises as soon as she's up and around."

"I don't get it. How could she walk away from a beating like that?" Scout asked. "The captain said the overunit hit her pretty hard and slammed her into a wall."

"She's done something like that before," Tank told them. "Remember that recon we did in Sector 7 and we met that overunit who knew her? He sent in a cadet about my size to fight her?"

Scout nodded. "Right. I set off some explosions as a diversion, part of the wall fell on her and she walked away with only a limp. I thought it was just luck. Maybe it's something more. I mean, she threw that overunit into the wall, and it knocked him out."

"Dread Youth are trained to be tough," Hawk told them. "We've always known that. They know how to fight, so I guess they know how to take a fall as well. Looks like Jennifer was better at it this time."

Tank and Scout went back to work, but Hawk couldn't help but wonder at what else happened during the mission. From what Jon had told them, it was as if Jennifer was determined to get Williams angry, maybe even get him to attack her, but why? He had a weapon trained on her...

Jon was in the room, shackled by chains, defenseless.

Hawk felt like slapping his head. Jennifer was protecting Jon like she always protected them when an overunit or youth leader showed up. She made herself the target to protect Jon and give the rest of them a chance to escape.

There was one thing Hawk was certain of -- Jennifer would risk her life for any of them. She'd done it before, she'd do it again, but to actively try to get an overunit angry instead of trying to get through to him by a reasoned appeal... it was because it was Jon in there and his life was in danger. She had to become the sole focus of the overunit's anger.

She was willing to go to extremes if it meant protecting Jon.

Hawk wondered -- was Jennifer aware that her feelings for Jon were showing? Was she aware that she had feelings for Jon?

More importantly, was she aware that Jon had feelings for her?

 

~*~*~*~*~

 

Jennifer realized at once that she was still in the med bay.

Half-asleep, she recognized the feel of the too-thin mattress and the distinct smell associated with medical centers. She also felt the lingering effects of the painkiller Hawk had injected into her. Thinking back, it was probably a good idea to have been given a painkiller because she hurt. Getting slammed into a wall, backhanded, kicked, shot -- that would even make Tank sore.

Her off-the-cuff plan of forcing Williams into a fight worked, but maybe angering him that much wasn't such a great idea after all.

She finally opened her eyes... yeah, the med bay. There were the dim lights and the barren walls that epitomized the unit.

She felt a hand rest on her arm. "Hi there," Jon's voice came from somewhere in the room. She slowly turned her head -- even her neck muscles were sore -- and saw him sitting uncomfortably in a chair.

"Hi," she answered. "I guess we both got stuck in here?"

"Matt's orders, and like you said, when I'm incapacitated, he's in charge," Jon joked. "How are you feeling?"

"Sore," she told him as a muscle spasm shot through her arm. She decided she wasn't going to move. Moving hurt, so lying still seemed to be a good idea. "How about you?"

"The same, and that truth drug they gave me finally wore off."

That was another reason Jennifer knew they didn't have time to waste. The truth drug was powerful. There was no way Jon could have held out forever against it, especially if Royer were to give him a second or third dose. "Good thing too," she told him. "There's no telling what you might have said if anyone asked you any questions."

Jon smiled and nodded his head. "I was a little worried for a while. Matt could have asked some embarrassing questions from when I was a kid, and there were a few things Mitch and I did that we wouldn't have wanted Matt to know about."

Jennifer could only smile, not laugh. "I heard part of what you told him. You were quoting lines from poems?"

Jon smiled. "Eldorado by Edgar Allen Poe and Nobody Knows It But Me by Patrick O'Leary. They're in one of the books in our library."

"Edgar Allen Poe..." Jennifer tried to think of the name. It sounded familiar. She could almost hear Mentor's voice saying something about being shut up by the sea... "Isn't he the one who wrote Annabel Lee?"

"Yes, that's him."

Jennifer closed her eyes for a moment. Even her head hurt.

"Headache?" Jon asked.

"Little one," she hoped she sounded more convincing to his ears than to hers. It really wasn't a 'little' headache, but there wasn't anything she could do about the pain but endure it.

"I was thinking that maybe... uh... maybe we need to talk about what happened in that room," Jon's voice was low but not angry.

Jennifer looked at him. What had happened that would need talking about? She thought back... no, nothing obvious came to mind. "Okay."

"It was a big risk you took back there."

"I should have considered that an overunit would be assigned there somewhere, but I never saw him until he walked in. Anyway, I didn't have time to worry about that."

Jon sat quietly for a moment. Then, "It's not just that," he told her. "You've always protected us from the Youth leadership when we fight them. You've let yourself become the target so everyone else could escape. I used to think I knew why you did it, but I didn't. Not until now."

What had he figured out? "Now?"

"The first time I ever saw you go up against a youth leader yourself, I thought it might have been guilt that motivated you, but what I saw in that room -- I was wrong. It's not guilt. You understand them."

"I used to be one, remember?" she reminded him. "I know you and the others have tried to understand that world, but unless you were raised in it, you really can't know. Dread soldiers aren't like other soldiers. We were all taught to ignore pain, ignore fear, think of ourselves as inferior to the machines... they don't fight the same as everyone else, and you can't fight them the way you would anyone else. You have to take the fight to their level, and part of that is a direct challenge which is something they're not accustomed to."

Had that thought never occurred to Jon? "No one ever challenges an overunit," he declared. "Youth leaders either. When you stand up to them --"

"I can play the same game they do, only I play it against them and better than they can," Jennifer smiled. "It's not guilt. It's the fact it's something I can do because I know how the Dread Youth think."

Jon took a tighter hold of her hand. "I would never ask you to impersonate an overunit. I just want you to know that."

That's what was bothering him, Jennifer realized. That was the crux of the problem. None of them would have ever asked her to do anything like that. Not a single one of her teammates would suggest such a thing, not after everything she had done to distance herself from her Dread Youth past. She squeezed his hand. "I know."

 

~~~

 

She knew, Jon realized. Maybe he had never said that out loud before, but she was perceptive. That was something that he always admired about her. There were some things that didn't need to be said because they just knew. "I also know you came in after me because you knew I was drugged and more troops were coming and I was in one of the special interrogation rooms."

He noticed how quiet she became. Those rooms were not topics of discussion, not for her. There was something in her past that she didn't want to talk about. The rooms had been mentioned before, but that was all. He didn't want to bring up bad memories. "You don't have to talk about it," he said.

She was quiet for a while, then, "I didn't know if I could do it," she told him. It's been so many years since I even wore the uniform, I wasn't sure I could convince that youth leader that I was a Dread soldier."

Jon smiled as he leaned over to ease some of the pressure on his back. "You did. If Williams hadn't walked in, I think you would have got away with it. Just out of curiosity, where did you get the uniform?" he asked her.

She laughed, but she grabbed her side when the slight movement sent painful waves through her. "I need to remember not to laugh," she whispered. "After I saw the youth leader separate you from the group, I trailed you. I passed by a supply room. Given how much was in there, I think there were various soldiers working that site. There was maybe enough stock for two weeks for six people. I took a few youth leader and overunit uniforms. You never know, I might need to impersonate one again. Even if I hadn't burned my old uniform years ago, it was torn up pretty badly." That it was. By the time the team had found her, she had been out in the wilderness for weeks. Dread Youth uniforms weren't built for that kind of punishment or continual fighting with troopers. "Would you believe this is the first time since I escaped that I wished I had one? I still hate the sight of them though."

"They can be a bit scary, but, uh..." Jon seemed to have trouble saying whatever it was he was trying to say, "To tell the truth, I almost didn't recognize you, but I was glad when you came through that door, uniform and all." It had been a glance into her past, into that world where she had once walked that he didn't really understand. There was a rigid sense of order, a restrictive feel to her personality when she stepped into that room. No emotion in her eyes, utter obedience to Dread and his machines, her hair pinned back in the severe style the female cadets wore, high-buttoned shirt and gleaming boots -- it was the ultimate appearance of a true Dread soldier. The Jennifer Chase he knew and cared about was the exact opposite of that. She was warm, kind and courageous. It was a rather jarring revelation to think that the person he knew might never have existed. Instead, she could have been one of the many rank-and-file overunits in Dread's army had she not realized the truth, and Jon would have never known her or felt the way he did about her.

No, truthfully, he hadn't been expected to see her either masquerading as an overunit or in the _uniform_ , but he had been glad to see her. She just had to wear the uniform to walk in that room.

"If you hadn't shown up when you did, well, I don't know how much longer I could have held out."

"As long as you had to," she said without reservation. "You know I wouldn't leave you there... I mean, we wouldn't have left you there. You wouldn't have given up or given in."

She had more faith in him than he had in himself, and she wouldn't have left him there...

She planned the villagers' rescue, the destruction of the digitizer, his rescue and their escape. She risked her life to walk into a crowd of biomechs alone and unarmed to get to him and was willing to masquerade as something she truly hated to get him out of there. There was a deep selflessness in the woman whose hand he held, a rare courage that he didn't see very often. In fact, there always seemed to be more depths to Jennifer than Jon had ever thought possible. Every new revelation made him want to know more.

"There's one thing I would like to know though," he said, trying to think of exactly how to ask his next question.

"What's that?"

"That move you used against Williams when you flipped him -- how did you do that?"

 

The End


End file.
